Russian WW2 interesting stats and facts

Greetings from Ostfront!






PS. From a Finnish auction site not from my collection, unfortunately.

 

Some Winter war pics:

Material caught from the Red Army and some Red Army prisoners.

 

Did you know Stalin had made a "new" government of his own for Finland as the Winter War began 1939:

The establishment of the "People's Government of the Democratic Republic of Finland" ( also known as the Terijoki government )was made public on the second day of the Winter War on December 1, 1939.

Alongside the Terijoki Government, the Soviet Union established a "People's Army" for Finland, whose forces were to march into Helsinki. There were also plans before the end of the Winter War for the establishment of border troops to guard Finland's borders with Sweden and Norway.

The Terijoki Government found itself in a crisis a month after it was founded, and its activities started fading away in January and February 1940.

The Kuusinen government had some support in Finland. They say that one indication of this are a number of unexploded artillery shells fired by Finnish forces at Soviet positions. Inside the duds were pieces of paper with messages saying "We are doing our best to help".

http://www2.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20011212IE7



Otto Ville Kuusinen, a Finnish communist, the Chairman of the new government by Stalin



A picture of the peace signing by the "new" Finnish government and Stalin, which was released too early to the world. This picture is still used in several books as the end show of the Winter War but Otto Ville Kuusinen was never the official representative for the Finnish government.Releasing this picture told also to the Finnish people what their fate would be under communist rule and united the country against Stalin.

 

Might have been earlier but:

The first place where the US army and the Red Army met was not actually Torgau but Strehla.

Strehla 25.4. 1330
Torgau 25.4. 1640 ( some hours later )

http://www.69th-infantry-division.com/memorials/strehla/strehla.htm

 

Civilians are always in the way....

Within hours of Hitler's suicide, General Hans Krebs set out to pay a visit to General Vasily Chuikov, the Soviet commander. He arrived shortly before 4 a.m. on 1 May 1945, taking Chuikov by surprise. With the Russian general were the writer Vsevolod Vishnevsky, the poet Evgeny Dolmatovsky and the composer Matvei Blanter. Vishnevksy and Dolmatovksy were in uniform, and pretended to be members of Chuikov's war council. As Blanter didn't have a uniform, he was made to hide in a cupboard and keep quiet. Krebs informed Chuikov that Hitler and his wife had killed themselves in his bunker. Chuikov calmly said that he already knew. He wasn't prepared to negotiate: it was unconditional surrender or nothing. A few hours into the meeting, which went on into the afternoon, Blanter tumbled noisily out of the closet, unconscious. He was lifted from the floor and carried into another room without a word of explanation to Krebs.

 

One reason for the Russian soldiers to join the party was that there was no dog tags or the kind for the ordinary Red Army soldiers so if you died the families would never know when and where.However if you were a party member the family was informed if you died in the battle.

Cornelius Ryan "The last battle"

 

On 22nd April 1945 the 100-year-old telegram center in Berlin was closed down for the first time in its history. The last message it received was from Japan: "Good luck to you all!"

2 forms of service never stopped in Berlin during WW2:

-the weather service
-11 out of 17 of city´s brewery´s kept on making beer

 

And if we remember the "Comissar Order" and similar anti-communist orders, we kind of realise why were so many crimes against POWs…

Thanks to two totalitarian régimes fighting to death.

 

The Red Army soldier´s slogan was "..take at least one German soldier with you before you die..." so I am sure the German Army and soldier were quite horrified of these tactics on the Ostfront...I would have been...

 

Hauptmann Emil Lang (173 kills) downed a record 18 aircraft in one day.( 3.11.1943 )

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/lang.html

Major Erich Rudorffer (222 kills) downed a record 13 aircraft in one sortie.

..6 November when in the course of 17 minutes, 13 Russian aircraft fell to his guns!

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/rudorffer.html

 

Polish site for pictures for Katyn murders
( Polish officers) found at 1943, killed in 1940 ny Red Army ( or the secret police).

http://historianiebezpieczna.kgb.pl/kom/pol/katyn/galeria1.html





http://historianiebezpieczna.kgb.pl/kom/pol/katyn/galeria.html

 

Il-2 "killers":

Otto "Bruno" Kittel 94
Joachim Brendel 88
Johannes Wiese 70+

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/stormovik.html



Otto "Bruno" Kittel

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/kittel.html

 

The fate of the transport fleet Tallinn Aug 1941

http://www.shipgaz.com/english/magazine/issues/2003/18/oldship_1803.asp

When the Germans closed in on Tallinn in August 1941, the Russians gathered a transport fleet for evacuation of the city. Pjotr Makejev participated in the flight from Tallinn, which led to one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the Baltic area. A string of shipwrecks at the bottom of Gulf of Finland along the route from Tallinn to Leningrad still reminds us of this. How much loss of human life occurred we may perhaps never know.
The Russians wanted to leave Tallinn earlier, but a storm delayed their departure to August 28. Part of the Russian command had boarded “Vironia” together with, among others, the office of the shipping magazine “Baltiskiy Flot”. The first convoy consisted of six transport vessels, with “Vironia” among them, a supply ship, a training vessel and three submarines, all escorted by two destroyers and 15 other vessels. The transport vessels probably had some 4,600 people on board, in addition to their own crews.
By noon on August 28, 1941, the vessels had left Tallinn and the first German plane was sighted as early as 2 p.m. Shortly after 6 p.m., one of the transport vessels struck a mine and sank. Some ten German planes attacked simultaneously, and Vironia was one of their main targets.
“The master of Vironia manoeuvred skilfully, but other large transport vessels were hit and a dense, dark smoke arose against the horizon.”
At 6.30 p.m., the Latvian icebreaker “Valdemars” was sunk by a mine. She was also commandeered by the Soviets. After a while, the bombers returned. Four bombs detonated so close to the “Vironia”, that the vessel was damaged and straggled behind the others.
Smokescreens were laid to mislead the bombers and when “Vironia” turned hard at the same time, many panicked and jumped into the sea. Others boarded the lifeboats, which were swung outside, with disastrous consequences: the crowded boats crashed into the sea.
“Vironia” was still floating but she had now stopped. A small patrol boat started towing “Vironia” but hit a mine and sank at 10 pm. Soon afterwards, “Vironia” met the same fate. In all, 34 transport vessels of 87 were lost. According to Makejev, some 15,000 people lost their lives. In hiss opinion, the main reason for the disaster was that the intended route had never been properly swept and that the Soviet intelligence had never figured out the exact locations of the mine fields which had been laid by German and Finnish minelayers, operating from Helsinki.
//Thure Malmberg

 

Paul von Kleist was interviewed by Basil Liddell Hart

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERkliest.htm

We did not underrate the Red Army, as is commonly imagined. The last German military attaché in Moscow, General Kostring - a very able man-had kept us well informed about the state of the Russian Army. But Hitler refused to credit his information.

Hopes of victory were largely built on the prospect that the invasion would produce a political upheaval in Russia. Most of us generals realized beforehand that if the Russians chose to fall back there was very little chance of achieving a final victory without the help of such an upheaval. Too high hopes were built on the belief that Stalin would be overthrown by his own people if he suffered heavy defeats. The belief was fostered by the Führer's political advisers, and we, as soldiers, didn't know enough about the political side to dispute it. There were no preparations for a prolonged struggle. Everything was based on the idea of a decisive result before the autumn.

 

On 7th September 1941 Maksim Gorki, positioned in the Leningrad merchant harbour, and Marat, stationed in the White Sea Canal, fired on advance units of the German Eighteenth Army south of the city and brought them to a standstill...

Hitler´s Stuka squadrons by John Ward

 

A couple of pictures from the Finnish front September 1941 after the surrender of surrounded Red Army troops at Porlammi !

 

4 July 1941

The Gebirgskorps "Norwegen" was supposed to have occupied Murmansk by this date, but the closest they got was about 40 kilometres from Murmansk, as the crow flies.

http://www.arcticwar.com/timeline.htm

 

The Last Horse Warriors

http://historynet.com/wwii/blhorsewarriors/index1.html

By Albano Castelletto, translated by Philip Monteleoni

THE FIRST WINTER CAMPAIGN

Winter was now at our doorstep, and it started to snow. Once during our stay in Yassinovatoye, where there was a railroad station, we were fairly astounded by the behavior of a contingent of Finnish volunteers. As soon as they arrived, they jumped down from the rail cars, took off all their clothes and began to roll around in the snow. We Italians were already well bundled up because the temperature was below freezing!

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Yes, I think that´s us....

 

Just goes to show what acclimatization can do.

 

In December 1942, Keßler and Gold engaged in their first propaganda “front action” against the encircled German defenders of Velikie Luki.

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=5974

I read that this was the first time that German soldiers fought each other in WW2, the Germans on the Russian side wearing Red Army uniforms.